1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to Word puzzle games employing cards movably inserted into templates to selectively reveal, through a plurality of windows, characters of puzzle-words or phrases, and which can additionally employ game boards to track and display players' successes.
2. Prior Art and Other considerations:
Puzzle and board games, as well as combinations thereof, have been a source of entertainment for literally hundreds and probably even thousands of years. Word puzzle games have become particularly popular in recent decades. Puzzle-like competitive games that combine progress of game pieces and/or characters and words and joining thereof upon board-like surfaces, such as for instance, various word dominoes, cross-word puzzle varieties, and word guessing games have become rather popular.
Word games involving masks or perforated window-like structures to obstruct or reveal characters, symbols, or patterns to provide clues toward puzzle solutions have also been proposed. For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 3,411,221, issued to Clark, discloses a word game having cards with a predetermined number of holes for representing an unknown word. One of these cards is selected and placed against a card having a blackened area representing a known word. By a systematic comparison procedure with various known word cards, the unknown word may be determined.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,263,999, issued to McCoy, discloses a concept of providing a plurality of game cards, each card containing a relatively large number of light-transmitting windows different from each other card. A master card is superimposed over the playing card to obscure the windows until enough windows are obscured to illustrate a word.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,159,563, issued to McNaney, discloses a card game having perforated playing cards designed for superimposition upon indicia-bearing base cards to produce an intelligible aggregate of elements. The base cards may bear letters.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,789,878, issued to Harris, shows a word and message forming game board for filling in of missing letters. Clues are used to complete the messages.
The word puzzle card and board game according to the present invention employs a plurality of different puzzle cards having different words or phrases imprinted thereon with each character disposed in certain specific locations associated with location indicia, the puzzle cards being inserted displaceably behind a template mask device, so that only certain locations are readable and, upon relative displacement, certain other locations become revealed. The game can further employ a game board having series of adjoining fields upon which game pieces are moved by players in accordance with the degree of success of players in guessing game card words or phrases as characters thereof are selectively revealed by the template mask device during step-by-step displacement of the cards in the template mask devices by players taking their turn.
Accordingly, an object of the invention is the provision of at least one template mask device and a plurality of puzzle cards, any one card thereof displaceably fitting behind the template mask device, so that characters in association with corresponding location indicia imprinted upon the particular puzzle card are selectively revealed by the template mask device to provide to players bases for puzzle solution guesses. There can further be provided a game board having a series of fields for movement of game pieces thereupon in accordance with the degree of success of a player in guessing words or phrases disposed on puzzle cards.